Food fight: foie gras
Top chefs propose strict new farming standards in late bid to avert July 1 ban on sale of controversial delicacy statewide
More than 100 of California’s best-known chefs have joined forces to fight the nation’s first state law banning the sale of foie gras.
In a last-minute effort, chefs such as Michael Chiarello, Thomas Keller, Ludo Lefebvre and Tyler Florence have signed a petition to submit to state Assembly Speaker John Pérez early this week, urging the Legislature to reconsider the July 1 ban.
The group, spearheaded by San Francisco’s Golden Gate Restaurant Association and calling itself Coalition for Humane and Ethical Farming Standards, is proposing new rules that would keep the sale of foie gras legal but require farmers to raise geese and ducks in a cage-free environment, minimize stress, and use feeding methods that do not
harm the bird’s esophagus or beak.
“We’re trying to create a humane market, not a black market,” said Rob Black, the restaurant association’s executive director who is seeking a legislative sponsor to carry a new foie gras bill or amend the old one.
“By repealing the ban and enacting strict new standards, we will send the message to the world that California is the leader in the humane and ethical treatment of animals.”
But former state Sen. John Burton, who carried the 2004 legislation that forbids the sale of a product resulting from force-feeding to enlarge a bird’s liver beyond normal size, said he doesn’t understand why these chefs and restaurateurs waited seven years, until the law is about to be enacted, to come forward.
“They’ve had all this time to figure it out and come up with a more humane way,” he said. “I’d like to sit all 100 of them down and have duck and goose fat — better yet, dry oatmeal— shoved down their throats over and over and over again.”
Members of the chefs’ coalition say their proposal is similar to Proposition 2, the farmanimal cruelty prevention act that voters passed overwhelmingly in 2008. The current legislation is convoluted, Black said, and could have unintended consequences, including the outlawing of down feathers, duck fat and other byproducts of the birds.
Black market?
It could also lead to widespread black-market sales of foie gras, he added. He points to Chicago, which passed a ban in 2006 and then repealed it two years later. Restaurateurs got around the rule there by giving away foie gras and charging $20 for a crouton to spread it on.
Chefs throughout California have been holding foie gras dinners to call attention to the upcoming ban. Many of the events have been picketed by animal rights protesters.
Other activists, including the Humane Society of the United States, which penned Prop. 2, simply say the chefs’ plan misses the point.
“I think their effort will be dead on arrival,” said Wayne Pacelle, the organization’s president and CEO, adding that there is no American foie gras producer who has been able to raise the birds without force-feeding them. And therein lies the problem, he said.
Typically, foie gras is produced by what the French call gavage — feeding the animals through a tube up to three times a day for 21 days — which fattens their livers 10 to 12 times their normal size. Critics say the method is not only cruel and torturous, but unnatural.
“Forcing them to eat more than they want is the problem,” Pacelle said.
Wolfgang Puck, the Los Angeles restaurateur who founded Spago and Postrio, is also in favor of the ban.
“The science is so clear that countries throughout Europe, as well as in Israel — which used to be the world’s No. 4 producer — have banned force-feeding for foie gras,” Puck wrote in a letter urging other restaurateurs to embrace the law.
Science isn’t clear
Arguably, the science isn’t that clear. Animal husbandry experts are not in agreement, and the American Veterinary Medical Association has declined to take a stand on the issue.
The Artisan Farmers Alliance, which represents all of America’s foie gras farmers, has argued that waterfowl in the wild naturally gorge themselves twice yearly before migration. The duck does not have a gag reflex and has an insensitive, collagen-lined esophagus, enabling it to swallow large fish and other food without pain.
But Pacelle holds fast that gavage is cruel. He knows of only one farmer, in Spain, who has produced foie gras without force-feeding, but that operation isn’t commercially viable.
California’s only foie gras producer, Sonoma Foie Gras, has lost its lease and is reportedly set to close at the end of June. It is one of the major suppliers to many Bay Area restaurants.
“They’re good people and they have a good product,” said Daniel Patterson, chefowner of San Francisco’s Coi and Oakland’s Plum and Haven, who agrees with the chefs’ petition.
“It’s a stupid law. It’s a big waste of time and a big waste of money. If we want to change how we eat in this country, there are a thousand other ways, like school lunches.”
Patterson is one of many chefs opposed to the ban who doesn’t serve much foie gras. Rather, it’s the principle.
“As a chef and a farmer, the ban doesn’t make sense to me,” said Chiarello, who signed the petition even though he rarely serves foie gras at his Napa restaurant, Bottega. “But as a businessman, I get it. The idea of trying to get through the shell of large agribusiness is almost impossible, so they go after the one one-hundredth percent of all animals consumed in the state.”
Like most luxury ingredients, foie gras is not a big money-maker for restaurants. However, many keep it on the menu because of customer demand.
“I took it off at one point in time,” said Traci Des Jardins of San Francisco’s Jardiniere, “and got a very negative response from customers. So there’s definitely a desire for it, and people don’t care where it comes from.”
Humane farming
For Douglas Keane, chefpartner of the four-star Cyrus in Healdsburg, the issue is not so much the freedom to decide what to serve but rather the creation of humane farming standards.
In fact, Keane — a licensed dog trainer and frequent animal shelter volunteer — refuses to serve ingredients he believes to be immoral, like milkfed veal. Keane insists this is not the case with foie gras ducks at places like Sonoma Foie Gras or another preferred producer, New York’s Hudson Valley Foie Gras.
“It sounds so horrible in concept and theory that people can jump on it, but for those that haven’t seen what happens, which I did with my crew, these ducks were not in the least bit uncomfortable,” said Keane, who also signed the petition.
“I’ve seen ducks that have been on gavage for 14 days. I’ve touched their necks. This is husbandry, this is farming. I walked away 100 percent confident serving it. The only way to go is to fight it and go get a sponsor for a bill.”